When the Obama Presidential Center opens its doors to the public this week on Chicago’s South Side, visitors strolling its nearly 20-acre campus will encounter a space designed for reflection, gathering and reverence: the Rosa Parks Courtyard Lounge.

Named for the civil rights icon whose quiet courage helped change the course of American history, the lounge is embedded in a campus built to honor the past while empowering the next generation of changemakers. 

The Kresge Foundation is proud to have helped make the Rosa Parks Courtyard Lounge possible through its support of the Obama Foundation. 

A space that honors a legacy of courage

Rosa Parks’s name carries enduring weight in the American story. The lounge bearing her name is intended to be more than an architectural feature — it is a civic space where visitors from Chicago neighborhoods and from around the world can pause, reflect and find inspiration to carry forward the unfinished work of justice and equity. It joins other new additions to Chicago’s civic commons on the Center’s campus, including a branch of the Chicago Public Library and a public plaza honoring the late Congressman John Lewis. 

Kresge’s support for the Obama Foundation reflects a shared commitment to fostering effective civic leadership and advancing inclusive, equitable community development in cities across the nation. The Obama Presidential Center will serve as a hub for programming that inspires, empowers and connects young people and civic leaders — work that aligns closely with Kresge’s mission to expand equity and opportunity in America’s cities. 

“The Obama Presidential Center is a catalyst for community development on Chicago’s South Side and a model for what equitable, culture-embedded placemaking can look like in cities everywhere,” said President & CEO Rip Rapson. “We proudly support the Obama Foundation and this space that honors Rosa Parks, whose lifelong legacy fighting for justice is deeply rooted in our hometown of Detroit.”

From the outset, the Obama Foundation has approached the Center’s construction as an opportunity to invest in the surrounding community. Through inclusive procurement processes, the Foundation has supported diverse contractors and created workforce development opportunities for residents of Chicago’s South and West Side neighborhoods. The result is a campus that does not simply sit within a community — it is being built with and for that community. 

This “whole of organization” approach to equitable, sustainable development mirrors the values Kresge champions through its place-based work in Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Fresno and beyond. 

Building the next generation of civic leaders

Beyond bricks, mortar and gardens, Kresge’s support also bolsters the Obama Foundation’s programs to develop the next generation of civic leaders.

Through initiatives like the Obama Foundation Leaders Program and the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, the Foundation is cultivating a network of nearly 1,000 changemakers working across sectors and across communities to drive systems-level change. 

It is the kind of distributed leadership long recognized as essential to lasting transformation in cities — leaders rooted in place, learning from one another, and turning shared knowledge into shared progress. 

A place where past and future meet

“By naming the Rosa Parks Courtyard Lounge we both honor an incomparable leader who called Detroit home and connect the moral clarity of the civil rights movement to the work of building more just cities today,” said Chantel Rush Tebbe, managing director of Kresge’s American Cities Program. “This is the kind of contemplative space Kresge is pleased to support — one intended to turn memory into inspiration and action.”